St Mark 12: 13-17 (Week 9 of Ordinary Time, Year 2)

St Mark 12: 13-17 (Week 9 of Ordinary Time, Year 2)

The chief priest’s unholy alliance with the Herodians, is simply a temporary pact to bring down a common enemy, Jesus. There is no love lost between these two groups who are poles apart at a religious and political level. The question is not a search for enlightenment or truth but a deceptive ploy to incriminate Jesus and set the people or the Roman authorities against him.

But Jesus is aware of their malice and wins the argument immediately, as he asks them for a coin. He doesn’t carry the Roman denarius and yet the pharisees do. They carry a coin with the effigy of the Roman Emperor who claims to be God. They break the commandment “thou shalt not make unto thee, any graven image.”

Jesus then asks whose head is this, whose name?  They answer Caesar. Jesus then says, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God, what belongs to God. In his answer he neither offends the Jewish faith or the Roman authorities. To Caesar give the coin but to God your whole being, as man and woman belong totally to their creator, the true God. We should bear God’s likeness and not Caesar’s, that is, the world.

We must remember that we are the aroma of Christ and therefore our Christian spirit should permeate and infuse all around us. We should seek to enhance our Christian influence and not allow ourselves to be cast aside through the false indoctrination, that imposes it’s wicked designs with militaristic force. We must fraternally defend God’s honour and God will be our defence in conquering our interior and exterior difficulties.